The red fonts were supposed to help you visualize several things in the story.
Honestly, if you're reliant on visual cues to tell your story, chances are, your narration is weak. Moreover, not all of us are using skins where it'd be a good idea to stare at red font. For example, those of us using Johto Elite are stuck with dark backgrounds, so bright red font + dark backgrounds = ow. I'm using Route 167 myself, and it's
still difficult to read because of the brightness in contrast with the background. Your main focus when writing a fic is
readability. If your description is decent enough, your readers should be able to visualize what's going on by themselves. Don't rely on gimmicks to tell your story.
Not to mention when I think "hot, sunny day," I don't think bright red. If I
do think of colors, I think of
blue and yellow because of a clear sky. So, using colors automatically assumes that every reader associates colors with things the way you do, which they don't.
That being said...
Sunny Day is a move.
A sunny day is a weather condition. Unless someone was outside constantly using Sunny Day, chances are, you'll want the lowercase version.
in the forest outside of Goldenrod City, a family of Typhlosion and Quilavas live in a nice 2 story house, and Quilava♂ has been drinking soda all day...
This is one massive run-on sentence. Do me a favor. Replace the first comma with a period. Notice how you get two separate sentences as a result? Now, try replacing the second comma and the word "and" with a period as well. There's a third sentence, right? You can't have more than one independent clause (full thought) in a single sentence, so you'll need to keep at least one of those periods in order to avoid creating a thought that just goes on and on.
Second, spell out all numbers from zero to ninety-nine. Don't use numerals like 2. Moreover, "two-story" should be hyphenated because it's being used as a single adjective.
Third, you don't need to put ♂ at the end of a name because it'll be obvious what gender he is once you start using pronouns. If you
must tell us what gender Quilava is, just say "a male Quilava."
As a side note, did you actually mean that there were more than one Quilava in this house, or is "Quilavas" a typo?
While we're on the subject of typos, you begin the massive sentence in the past tense ("it
was a hot, sunny day") but continue on in present ("Typhlosion and Quilavas
live"). Don't switch tenses, especially mid-sentence.
Lastly, you don't need an ellipsis. Ellipses convey a "soft" ending -- like you're trailing off and not finishing a complete thought. For a beginning sentence, you'll need a "hard" ending: a period, which conveys a definite end to your thought.
All of that is just the first sentence, which makes me think you could benefit from getting a beta reader. It's not a good thing if you open up your work with so many oddities in logic and grammar because the first chapter is meant to serve as a "hook." If your readers spot a lot of problems, they'll be less likely to want to sit down and continue onward.
Because there's a
lot of errors in grammar, I'm going to refrain from pointing out the majority of them, especially given that you probably get the idea that that's most likely not your forte.
His mom yelled,"NO MORE QUILAVA!!!"
However, I
will say that there's a reason why you'll need correct grammar. Sometimes, mistakes could change the meaning of the sentence. For example, in this case, you're not saying that his mom is telling him to stop drinking soda. You're saying that his mom is screaming that there's no more Quilava. After "more," you need a comma for direct address to show that a character is speaking directly to another character, not that Quilava is meant to be the object of this sentence.
It's also a good idea to write your work on a word processor like Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, or Google Docs. (The last of these is online and completely free.) That way, you have a way of checking the spelling of your work.
You can tell because there was a small trail of Pepsi™ on the floor.
First off, you don't need to put a trademark on Pepsi. Technically,
all of the things you've just mentioned (Quilava, Typhlosion, Munchlax, et cetera) are all
also trademarked, so you'd need to put appropriate symbols after all of them. Except that doesn't look all that great in written work, so it's usually already assumed by a reader that if it's a famous brand, you're not the one who owns it.
Second, no, we can't tell. Don't switch to second person for no apparent reason because we're not there. Instead, you could say "he could tell" or simply describe the small trail on the floor.
Even then, third, why Pepsi? If it's a trail of soda, you can't really tell Coke from Pepsi from a generic brand by sight, so making that detail oddly specific makes it feel like we're missing a few other details (e.g., seeing the logo on the can, having Quilava mention that he's after Pepsi specifically, what-have-you) that would have made it clear that it's Pepsi and not just soda. If it's a trail of cans... why
only Pepsi? I mean, up until this point, Quilava is only mentioned to be drinking
soda -- as in, generic, brand-doesn't-matter soda. It seems odd that all of a sudden, we get a name drop as if the brand matters
now.
Moreover, a couple of thieves break into a house while the occupants are most definitely awake. Said thieves take their time literally cleaning out the fridge. All of this happens in the time it takes to drink a soda, and
no one notices? I kinda find it odd that Quilava wouldn't notice the thieves with a bag of food until
after he notices that the fridge is empty. Wouldn't it be a little obvious that someone he doesn't know is standing right there with a huge bag of food?
Quilava's best friend is a Kirlia♀.
Instead of just coming right out and telling us what Quilava's best friend is, it's better to introduce us. Have Kirlia appear in some way. Otherwise, it feels like this detail is completely out-of-place because you're going from sharing with us the story to dropping everything in order to tell us the species of this other Pokémon.
This is, of course, ignoring the fact that Kirlia don't live in Ilex Forest to begin with. (Neither do Quilava, but at least Quilava are from Johto.)
I also have to second Asty's comment about Pokémon being human. The problem is that they're most definitely
not human, so they don't think like us. It's a lot like having a dog live like a person without really going into an explanation for why the story has to be told that way. Redwall and a lot of Disney movies tend to pull this idea off because they establish quickly that their heroes and societies are centered around animals or co-existed closely with people, but ultimately, they're still animals. Here, it doesn't feel like there's a particular reason why you want a Quilava to be drinking soda.
Actually, to be frank (and I'd hate to put this incredibly bluntly), but it feels like there's not much in the way of a plot going on here. Is this meant to be crackfic, a fic where random things happen, or is this fic just about Quilava trying to get his soda back? If it's the latter, why should we care that Quilava doesn't have soda? The problem, I think, is that there's not a lot in terms of content in this first chapter. We can't really get a good handle on why soda is important to this particular Quilava, and we can't really get a good reading on Quilava's characterization. As far as we can tell, he's more or less a blank slate. Does he panic when he doesn't have soda? Does he go through withdrawal? What does soda even mean to him? Is he just after the soda, or does he also want to get back the rest of the food? Beyond that, how does his mother feel about him running after a bunch of thieves? (And while we're asking questions, why did they appear
outside of the next house, rather than right
inside? I mean, considering that's what they most likely did for Quilava's house unless Quilava and Typhlosion are
particularly oblivious...)
Also, why is it important that the story features Quilava? Will he be using his natural skills to advance the story? And why was it important to know that his mother is shiny?
There's a lot of questions that this chapter leaves us asking that just shouldn't be asked, I'm afraid to say. It just feels bare-bones here. My advice would be to find a beta reader (someone who can read over your work before you post it and help you develop your story further) first off. Second, after you finish each chapter, read things over again carefully. Try to find places where you didn't explain enough, didn't describe enough, and so forth. Remember that we're not you, so we can't imagine everything that's going on in your head unless you tell us. We don't know where the story is going or why you decided to do what you're doing. So, keep that in mind and develop your story around trying to answer potential questions we might have.
Good luck with future chapters.
